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Topic: Sugar Cane Juicer (Read 27332 times)

I've been using my manual crank sugarcane juicer waaaay more than I expected. I used it about 8-10 times in the last three weeks. I just love fresh squeezed sugarcane juice! Here's a picture of some juice I just squeezed. This variety of cane is great because the juice stays yellow till the next day if you squeeze a little lime into it as an antioxidant.

Anyways, I've been juicing a lot and I'm growing many different varieties of sugarcane so I thought about attaching the flywheel of my manual crank sugarcane juicer to a bike so that I can juice my cane easier and get some cardio at the same time. I did a YouTube search and it appears others have already put this contraption together.

I can easily buy an electric motor to attract to my unit but I like the idea of a bike powered juicer. I especially like it being more environmentally friendly as well as it most likely being more quiet and able to run without electricity. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b71AGXNOQRISimon

Jesus Simon, you are torturing us Lucky for us we have Westminster and Chinatown right around the corner. I go on Sunday to drink guarapo and eat fritters.

LEOOEL, if you only knew the life of a dollar bill! Think making it rain and you'll catch my drift, lol! I really do recommend getting a juicer if you're a sugarcane juice fanatic like I am. If you aren't growing any cane right now, you should start now so that you'll have an endless supply of organic sugarcane that you cane squeeze at your leisure. I get strange sweet tooth cravings and I've had late night cravings for sugarcane juice and all I had to do was go into my backyard and cut down some cane and run it through my juicer.

JF, your guarapo craving will be satisfied soon enough. Every time someone mentions sugarcane juice, I get the craving. Heading to the backyard now!

LEOOEL, if you only knew the life of a dollar bill! Think making it rain and you'll catch my drift, lol! I really do recommend getting a juicer if you're a sugarcane juice fanatic like I am. If you aren't growing any cane right now, you should start now so that you'll have an endless supply of organic sugarcane that you cane squeeze at your leisure. I get strange sweet tooth cravings and I've had late night cravings for sugarcane juice and all I had to do was go into my backyard and cut down some cane and run it through my juicer.

JF, your guarapo craving will be satisfied soon enough. Every time someone mentions sugarcane juice, I get the craving. Heading to the backyard now!

Simon

Simon What has been the best tasting cane for you? I expect to have cinta and Cristalina

For me personally, it's a three way tie. If I had to pick only one, the best tasting sugarcane is probably a local no name variety which I am calling San Diego Yellow. It is a small thin cane usually around 1 inch in diameter with a yellowish skin color. It is extremely sweet and does not oxidize as fast as many of the other varieties I've sampled. Also, the thin canes make it much easier for juicing. I'm growing this cane but they are too young to harvest. I will work with my friend that originally supplied them to me so that I can bring a bundle to the Mango tasting for everyone to sample. The taste of the San Diego Yellow is pure and clean yet it has just a touch of mineral taste to give it some character.

A very very close second is the Asian Black cane. This cane is very uniform in its size and is very soft and very sweet. It's taste is ultra pure as if it's been triple filtered through charcoal and it has very very little to no mineral taste. Some people may prefer this clean tasting juice. The flavor might be influenced by my growing condition, not exactly sure. The downside to the Asian Black cane is that the juice comes out very dark if you don't peel the cane and I don't peel my cane. The peel is supposed to have healthy stuff in it so I leave it on. I always wash my canes very carefully to remove dirt.

My third choice is the Green and Red Striped cane which is thick and bulges out in the middle of the sections. It is very sweet and has a very high mineral taste which some people may prefer. My canes are in various stages of growth and my top picks may change as I get to taste each variety when they are fully ripe.

I have removed several varieties from my collection because I did not like the taste including an Indian variety and also the common green variety. I am waiting to taste a fully ripe Yelliw Gal and a purple variety which is possibly the same as the Asian Black. I got the Purple from Exotica.

LEOOEL, if you only knew the life of a dollar bill! Think making it rain and you'll catch my drift, lol! I really do recommend getting a juicer if you're a sugarcane juice fanatic like I am. If you aren't growing any cane right now, you should start now so that you'll have an endless supply of organic sugarcane that you cane squeeze at your leisure. I get strange sweet tooth cravings and I've had late night cravings for sugarcane juice and all I had to do was go into my backyard and cut down some cane and run it through my juicer.

JF, your guarapo craving will be satisfied soon enough. Every time someone mentions sugarcane juice, I get the craving. Heading to the backyard now!

Simon

Yeah, I get your drift.

A sugar cane juicer is similar to a coffee maker in the sense that it involves social and cultural affairs. Therefore, deciding on the appropriate Sugar Cane Juicer and the location where it'll be used is an important consideration, along with budget consideration. This process may sound tedious, but if done right, I expect it to pay off in the enjoyment of the ultimate setup/outcome.

One thing is for certain, at least in my case, to keep purchasing sugar cane juice as mentioned above, would seem to fall somewhere between 'living la vida loca' and 'playing Russian roulette.'

For fastest growth, I water three times per week according to our drought watering schedule. They are a grass and they like water. Because of their fast growth rate in warm weather, they also like fertilizer.

Here's a quick update of some of the sugarcane I've been growing. My kids wanted some sugarcane juice so I chopped a couple pieces down and was surprised at how tall they got. The tallest canes are 14-16 feet with about 5-6 feet of sweet usable cane. Usually the sugarcane is sweetest in the Winter but these two varieties are already much too sweet to drink un diluted. I fill a glass half full of ice or else it's just too much sweetness. These varieties are Asian Black and San Diego Yellow. Simon

After getting the Breville BJE820XL Juice Fountain Duo Juicer and juicing some good priced organic carrots like there's no tomorrow, I hesitantly decided to do what had been on my mind for months, to find out whether this powerful juicer can handle juicing sugar cane.

Although I was very worried that I would end up breaking this brand new user, I was curious and had to find out.

I cut two long stalks of sugar cane into small pieces so that the juicer could handle them easier, then I proceeded to feed the pieces into the juicer.

Somewhat immediately, as the juicer was spitting out the sugar cane fiber out one end and the juice flowing out the other, this process was producing uncomfortably loud popping sounds as the fiber was being spit out. The sound was disagreeably loud.

After a few seconds, the normal sound of the motor changed, as if something was holding it back and at such time, I immediately turned it off and unplugged it from the electrical power outlet. And, sure enough, after looking inside, the fine dry powder had compacted and was obstructing the rotation of the spinning blade.

After close inspection, the machine extracted all of the juice out of the sugar cane, because all of the fibrous part of the sugar cane was turned into a fine, dry, powder.

Finally, I drank the produced sugar cane juice. The final verdict with me is that sugar cane juice produced by the conventional pressing method tastes much better than the juice produced by this juicer using the spinning blade, centripetal force method.

So, back to the old drawing board, the search continues for the best designed and functioning sugar cane juicer.

Update on my experiment to use the 'Breville BJE820XL Juice Fountain Duo Juicer' as a sugar cane juicer:

It's been almost a full year of not using my 'Breville...' juicer. In all honestly, I was afraid to find out if I had ruined it in the above sugar-cane experiment.

Well, I finally decided to find out. And, I'm very pleased to report that my 'Breville...' juicer is still in top shape. I've been juicing carrots, apples, veggies... for the past 2 weeks like there is no tomorrow. This machine is absolutely amazing IMO. I love to use it, it's easy to clean, and it's just an aesthetically beautiful machine to look at. Before I purchased it, I worried about the noise level in the kitchen to be somewhat that of a jet engine. But, fortunately, I do not find it at all bothersome. On the contrary, I find the noise to be somewhat technologically soothing.

I do wish a sugar-cane juicer machine existed that had similar characteristics to my 'Breville...' juicer, or at least came somewhat close to it.

Here's a quick update of some of the sugarcane I've been growing. My kids wanted some sugarcane juice so I chopped a couple pieces down and was surprised at how tall they got. The tallest canes are 14-16 feet with about 5-6 feet of sweet usable cane. Usually the sugarcane is sweetest in the Winter but these two varieties are already much too sweet to drink un diluted. I fill a glass half full of ice or else it's just too much sweetness. These varieties are Asian Black and San Diego Yellow. Simon

Those are tall sugarcanes! I planted some Asian black this spring and they're only around 5-6ft tall. What do you feed yours with?

I feed my sugarcane with Azomite Rock dust and whatever old fertilizer I have laying around. I amended their planting bed with lots of organic amendments, compost, cottonseed meal, kelp meal, blood meal before I planted the cane. The cane also grows very fast if you water it like a grass.

I also have sugarcane in large pots and they don't grow nearly as fast. Their is a lot of surface area to each stalk of cane and growing sugarcane in a pot challenges the grower with keeping up with water demands. We have a drought in California so I can only water my potted plants twice a week and I guesstimate they pretty much need daily watering so to thrive.

What has been the best tasting cane for you? I expect to have cinta and Cristalina

The same cane cultivar will taste different depending on its state of maturity, part of the cane plant, and environmental factors. Here in Fiji, one reason cane is grown on the the dry side of the largest islands is because the stress from lack of rain gets the brix (sugar) of the juice up to 25% or so.

If the cane is harvested before at least some flower tassels are in bloom, the brix won't be as high. Also, cane sections nearest the ground level have the higher sugar content.

I realize there are other taste differences between cultivars, but a high brix is always nice!

Logged

Applying laws and rules equally to all is a cornerstone of a civilized society.

Iíve been using my GPF-1 juicer for many years now and I havenít had any issues with it but my sugarcane plants have grown enormous and I have so much juicing to do that I decided to motorize my juicer. I checked out Lukeís website and knew he had a motor kit that would fit my GPF-1 so I emailed him and ordered the kit.

My Asian Black Sugarcane is absolutely delicious and soft, great for chewing because there are less fibers but for this same reason, it is not the best for juicing because the lack of fibers causes the spent canes to fall apart after the first press.

My favorite juicing sugarcane is what I call San Diego Yellow. I tested out about 10 different varieties of sugarcane and this variety along with Asian Black were my favorites.

I received my San Diego Yellow sugarcane cuttings from my friend and owner of The Fruit Shop here in San Diego. He tried out many different varieties and this was the best variety he found and I agreed.

When I first received my cuttings of SDY from my friend, his only complaint was that the canes were really small diameter which is actually not a bad thing when juicing because you donít have to cut the canes in half.

He said the lady that was growing the canes were growing it in her front yard and didnít water it much. I believe I posted pictures of the bundles of canes earlier on in this thread. Anyways, the canes were very small diameter the first year but after I increased watering and threw on some excess fertilizer, the canes started growing like crazy.

Some of my SDY Yellow canes have more than 10 feet of trimmed usable cane and the larger diameter canes have a diameter of about 2.5 inches and a rough circumference of 6.5 inches. At first, I hated these larger canes because I had to cut them into 1/4-1/2 in order to juice them so I had to hand crank 2-4 times as much but now Iím thinking that with a motorized unit, it will no longer be an issue and can even have benefits.

After juicing for so many years, I realize that cleaning the sugarcanes is the hardest part of the job. Growing cane is easy, juicing is easy, cleaning the juicer is easy but cleaning is a pain in the ass. You have to strip all the leaves and I hand scrub every single cane top to bottom.

I recently realized that the thicker canes arenít so bad because there is fewer number of canes to clean per volume of juice. For me, itís much easier to clean two big canes than 6 smaller ones. It also appears that I get so much more juice from one big cane compared to 2-3 smaller canes. I think it has to do with the equation that relates the volume of a cylinder increasing significantly with an increase in diameter or radius of the cylinder but thatís more than I want to get into at this time.

Here are some pictures of my Asian Black and San Diego Yellow canes. Iíll be sure to update when I get my motor kit assembled.

I received the electric motor for my sugarcane juicer today. I just have to set up a stand, cut some wood, wire the motor and find the appropriate belt. Itíll probably take me a week or two to get it assembled as I donít have much free time but Iíll update when itís all done. Simon

After careful consideration, Motorized Sugar Cane Juicer is the best way to go, IMO.

The best location for a Sugar Cane Juicer at Home is in an Outdoors Kitchen in a residential House. Iíve personally never cared much about an Outdoors Kitchen because it would occupy valuable fruit tree space. But, an Outdoors Kitchen that includes a Sugar Cane Juicer, I must concede, is a great reason to have one.

Fresh Sugarcane juice is absolutely amazing! I canít get enough of the juice. I mix the sugarcane juice with so many other fruit and vegetable juices from my yard. Besides some of the juice mixes I already mentioned, I like to mix sugarcane juice with Watermelon juice.

Sometimes Iíll buy a watermelon that isnít as sweet as I want so I end up juicing it but the juice is not very sweet. After mixing the watermelon juice with my sugarcane juice, it comes out perfect.

After careful consideration, Motorized Sugar Cane Juicer is the best way to go, IMO.

The best location for a Sugar Cane Juicer at Home is in an Outdoors Kitchen in a residential House. Iíve personally never cared much about an Outdoors Kitchen because it would occupy valuable fruit tree space. But, an Outdoors Kitchen that includes a Sugar Cane Juicer, I must concede, is a great reason to have one.

Leoel, an electric sugarcane juicer is great to have if you donít care about exercise, noise or the need to have electricity. Electric juicers will save you a lot of sweat and if you get a strong and expensive unit, you can juice massive amounts of cane in a short period of time.

For me personally, even though I am motorizing my unit, I would recommend a sugarcane juicer that has the ability to juice sugarcane manually. A manual juicer hardly makes any noise so you can even juice in the dead of night when everyone else is in deep sleep.

The manual crank juicers also give you a great workout which will help you to burn some of the sugars, it definitely gets my heart pumping when I manually juice 1 gallon or more. For someone not so fit, juicing 1/2 gallon can get you tired and sweating.

One of the best reasons to get a manual crank juicer is because you donít need electricity. I know there are some preppers out there and if there were a natural disaster, prolonged power outage or the water supply got contaminated, you can still get nutrition and fluid from sugarcane juice.

Once a patch of sugarcane gets established, they can survive for long periods of time without irrigation. In the highly unlikely event that our water supply were cut off due to some unforeseen disaster, an electric only sugarcane juicer will be of little help although Iím sure there are those skillful enough to convert and electric model into a manual model.

With the setup I have, I can manually juice if I want just a small amount of juice. With the electric motor kit, I can dramatically speed things up and crank out a lot more juice if I wanted more juice for a party or other large gathering.

In a YouTube video I saw, someone mentioned that someone they knew threw a party and bought a brand new electric sugarcane juicer and a ton of fresh sugarcane and when they plugged in the machine, it was already broken. They werenít able to fix the machine and the sugarcane pretty much was wasted.

If they had a dual purpose unit, at least they would be able to crank out some juice.

Iíve brought my manual sugarcane juicer to many parties and the partygoers always want to try juicing their own cane juice. One sip of the fresh sugarcane juice and the people are hooked!

Iíve had people asking me if I added sugar to the juice even though I clearly juiced the cane right in front of their eyes. The next question is usually ďwhere can I get a juicer like thatĒ, then comes ď how much does something like that costĒ followed by ďis it easy to grow sugarcaneĒ?

On a side note, several people asked me how much juice I get from one stalk of Sugarcane? Well, it depends on the variety and the size of the cane. Here in SoCal, it takes about 1.5 years to get large sized canes. If you water and fertilize frequently, it will grow much faster. I neglect my canes, and most my other plants so it takes me 1.5 years to get the 2+ inch thick canes.

The large 2 inch plus canes are only this large towards the bottom and it gets narrower at the tip of the plant. An approximately 10 foot section of my larger San Diego Yellow sugarcane will yield roughly 1/2-3/4 gallon of juice.

This is a lot of juice if you take into consideration that hardly anyone I know will drink the juice straight. People may try a sip or two straight but soon realize that itís much better if diluted by 1/3-1/2 with ice, water, citrus juice or a combination of these.